Sorry, Couldn't help but reply.

You really need to do some thinking of your own. Without questioning the conclusions of each of the articles in question, if these are the arguments being used to come to the conclusions, someone needs to go back to school. From the first article regarding the relative size of human impacts, this quote (and it is in context)

"It is true that human emissions of CO2 are small compared with natural sources. But the fact that CO2 levels have remained steady until very recently shows that natural emissions are usually balanced by natural absorptions."

tells me that the author has never seen the Vostock ice core records of CO2 levels.

The article about doing something about climate change is the usual destroy the economy stuff. Given that the article does not differentiate between human caused climate change and natural climate change gives one pause.

The higher level of CO2 doesn't increase plant growth article has these insightful things to say in proving that CO2 doesn't boost plant growth. Again, these are in context. Read the articles if you don't think they are.

"Where water is a limiting factor, all plants could benefit."
and
"These experiments suggest that higher CO2 levels could boost the yields of non-C4 crops by around 13 per cent."

Just to be clear, there is a very strong case that human emissions are significant enough to matter. The article you quote is clueless as to what that case is. Those New Scientist articles are horrible. They are horrible because they are so easily rebutted. If I were a "denier", I would encourage everyone to read them. As Napolean said, never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

Actually, there are very strict rules that absolutely require them to publish every single bit of information. In Canada, it is called National Instrument 43-101. In the US, there are similar laws. Search for "Bre-X" for the why. Search the laws at the Securities and Exchange commission for US equivalents, that are as strict.

My first FreeBSD install was 4.7 on Dec 11, 2002 (after 2 years of Debian). I completely abandoned it in June of 2010. It was a continuous nightmare of: keep up to speed with the security mailing list, the latest package that was broken at install (yes I did read UPDATING godamit) and needed to be back ported, the nightmare of some obscure library being upgraded, requiring a complete re-install, often requiring various obscure incantations and occasional sacrificing of a chicken, unless of course you didn't follow the needed patching as per the security mailing list. Knee jerk RTFM responses to questions on the mailing lists.

Meh. I run Windows 7 now. Much politer community, out of the box it is very secure with many lock outs. In my opinion, far superior to FreeBSD in that it does not require a sys admin to keep it running, let alone secure. I admit I never was compromised by an outside virus. My log book documents periods of days at a time trying to fix something that a standard portupgrade broke. Who needs viruses when you have such a labour intensive system.

The absurd release schedule is why I stopped using it. Seeing as I'm "IT" for many friends and family, that means they've all stopped using it too.

Just sayin

Of course prior to becoming sequestered in said rock formations, the CO2 was part of the atmosphere. Must be something in the geological record of the massive runaway global warming that had to have occured before CO2 became coal and oil. Those conglomerate rocks couldn't have come from continental glaciers when CO2 was 10 times higher than today. Or would that too be "consistent with climate models"?

I suppose we could cut down some rainforest if we don't want to use food. That would still be green wouldn't it?

Note that this gasification technology would work with coal too.

There's a lot more and cheaper coal than "renewable / green" sources (previously called "food").

Just sayin.

Are you suggesting that Exxon Mobil gets more in subsidy than they pay in taxes? From the Exxon Mobil corporate documents (look it up if you think I made these up), and note that these are only sales taxes, not including corporate income tax, payroll taxes (in Canada, about 25% of the gross salary of an employee), royalties to the government of the country they produce in, income tax of employees, etc., etc.

(1) Sales and other operating revenue include sales-based taxes of $28,547 million for 2010, $25,936 million for 2009, $34,508 million for 2008, $31,728 for 2007, and $30,381 for 2006. (Sec 1:10, Summary Annual Report, 2010)

Total taxes paid in 2010 were about $86 BILLION. So you are saying that Exxon is paid more than $80 billion a year from the government? Shell, BP, Chevron and Total too? They pay similar taxes as Exxon. That is close to half a TRILLION dollars in taxes, every year, probably more when you add in the lessor companies.

What are you smoking?

You do realize that many of the data points used to produce the 'hockey stick' graph were withheld for extended periods don't you? The scientists involved actively refused to provide that data for quite some time. When the data was eventually revealed, it was reluctant at best. By your standards, Dr. Jones at East Anglia University, who refused to provide data, citing 'confidentiality agreements' that he also refused to provide should be ignored as a quack. There are copious other examples. Should we be ridiculing these people as quacks?

Is English your first language? Science does not need to be based on faith for people to have faith in science. Science is hard. Most people are not capable of undertaking even the simplest of scientific endeavours. Most people have to trust what a scientist says because they can't fully understand what they are saying. Trust without knowledge is faith. All moronic concepts I'm sure.

Nothing in my second paragraph is "anti-Global Warming". I can and have explained the greenhouse effect and the contribution of CO2 to that effect. I can and have explained why such distractions as the greater contribution of water are not relevant.

My point is that the serious allegations revealed by the e-mails have been covered up by those who should have been shining a light on them. And the entire "proxy" thing should drive any true scientist to distraction. Two things are alleged to reflect the same property. I.E. tree rings and other types of temperature record. For a statistically significant period, they do not agree, indeed, they diverge. I would posit that this is sufficient to conclude they do not reflect the same property. That is, the evidence as published supports the assertions that tree ring proxies are not suitable as a measure of temperature. The ongoing effort to support this distraction is offensive to me. It provides ammunition to all of the anti-science nutbars throughout the world and the longer we avoid acknowledging this, the worse it gets. Whether or not AGW is real and serious is not dependant on the hockey stick graph. Supporting that thing blindly is slowly and inexorably bringing all of science into disrepute.

Either you are misinformed or you are being disingenuous.

"Gene", i.e. Eugene Wahl has provided congressional testimony that he did indeed delete emails related to the inclusion of off the record, unpublished, unreviewed material to counter on the record, published and reviewed material in the IPCC AR4. It was not a fit of pique, but rather an acknowledged action carried out by a number of people.

Tree ring proxies do indeed agree with other proxy measurements at many times. As you point out yourself, they do NOT reflect other proxy measurements after 1960. This is also acknowledged by Trenberth et. al. Just because a measurement coincides with another measurement for a period of time does not mean it is a valid substitution. Indeed, being able to show a period when the two diverge is usually sufficient evidence that the two are not measuring the same thing.

The assertion that Jones could not provide data because it was "proprietary" is pernicious. You conflate this by alleging "private corporations". Neither is relevant. If the data is not released, it cannot be verified. As you clearly know, there is still data that has not been released.

Not sure what "ridiculous fairy tales" I believe in. I can perform radiant heat transfer calculations and have done so professionally. I can provide a pretty good explanation of the greenhouse effect. I can provide pretty good explanations about how the fact that water is the greater cause of the effect, this is not relevant to the argument that increasing CO2 increases absorption of heat. I can explain quantitatively how increasing heat will increase temperature. As a scientist, I am not in doubt about AGW. I am however appalled by the actions of these people and even more appalled that more scientists aren't raising their voices in anger.

The teaching of creationism is gaining credence because of the ongoing reduction in the trust in science. If you think this is funny, you don't realize how severe that erosion is. Bible thumpers tell us the earth is 6,000 years old. Idiots tell us that plate techtonics is wrong. Bimbos make life threatening, yet influential pronouncements on vaccination policy. The list of such moronic musings grows every day. Today, we have very large portions of the planet's population that strongly believe in many things that science has long ago shown to be bunk. Fundamentalist religious beliefs are not confined to the US or christianity.

A number of years ago, I noted here that, as scientists, we had better be right about global warming, because if we are wrong, science itself will suffer. Since that time, we have "scientists" destroying records of behaviour, lest they be "misconstrued", "scientists", with straight faces, saying that an instrument for recording temperature (tree rings) should be believed, even if they do not reflect temperature when calibrated (the divergence problem which is what "hide the decline" is all about). "Scientists" who regularly refuse to provide the basic data that they use to come to conclusions. Were these "scientists" employed as geophysicists for "big oil" in Canada, they would be breaking securities law that requires adherence to NI-43-101.

No wonder people are losing faith in science. Science has broken faith with us.

And that ain't funny.

How about we call it food. Because that is what we are using to create this stuff. Sure, you can produce these things with waste, but corn is better and more efficient and hence much more profitable. As such, this will divert food from (literally) starving people to powering engines. Good luck identifying whether it is from corn or kelp. There is a perfectly good substitute for using food to create the fuel to power your car. It is called crude oil.

Cheers

JE

Henry Ford refused to pay George Seldon royalties for his patent for a "Road Engine". Up to that time, every car manufacturer in the United States paid Seldon a royalty. Seldon would today be called a patent troll. The only reason Ford won in court was the vehicle patented by Seldon did not function when finally built according to the idea that Seldon had patented. Had Seldon patented a "Thing with wheels on it and an engine" Ford probably would have lost.

Cheers

JE